In deference to Lakennedy, whom I respect, John gets no more slams from me for his style.
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John, you have the bully pulpit, but expect "feedback" if you lecture us like a high school class. Your class rules about civility and demanding respectful discourse do not apply to internet Blogs. Some of the more conservative opinions have weighed in, and perhaps you do not like the tone. Get used to it, they deserve to express their critical view as well. If you throw the opinion out, expect to be called on it.
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Back to the economy. Politics aside, economists would not use "depression" to describe the economy at this point. While the current recession is deep in terms of unemployment levels and contraction of GNP, it has not lasted long enough to be termed a depression. Certainly, parts of the nation are severly depressed, but it is not of the scale, scope and term of what happened from the late 1920's to the onset of WW2.
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While most of our conservative bloggers do not agree with Keynesian economics, government stimulus will inject capital into the economy. While tax cuts are called for on supply side economics, the basic consumption and investment dynamics in the economy are too weak to expect a turn around. Furthermore, despite low interest rates, and favorable NPR return on investment, consumption is so weak that it precludes capital investment. If I were running the show, I would have cut capital gains to spur investment. The fed ought to be keeping a real close watch on inflationary pressure. My guess is that it will become a factor in the 3rd quarter of 2010. The thought of stagnation is really depressing.
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This recession hit hard because it started in the financial sector, but also froze the manufacturing sector, with retail and services to follow. The signs are not good. Durables are still down, and inventories continue to shrink. As long as the economy continues to contract, unemployment will rise.

It is quite rich for John to ask why the government "can't tell the truth" in this column while in his last rant he implored the government to take over the health care system. Such severe cognitive dissonance must keep John awake at night. It is equally rich that while he says the nation needs to talk openly about controversial issues such as race, it is his beloved liberal left-wingers that have instituted a political correctness thought police that rivals the Stasi and modern day Iran. He himself uses the term "people of color" to show he is hip with PC (does that make John a "person of non-color" or simply a "pigment challenged person?"). It is unfortunate that John cannot write consistently and cohesively on issues rather than leaping from one liberal screed to another.

Why don't politicians tell the truth?? It's an easy answer if you simply look to the root of the issue......it's not profitable! The same applies to people in general. Why do people lie? We live in an instant gratification society. Living by principles and truth doesn't always get us what we want "right now". Politicians are elected based on the "what's in it for me" mindset. The good of the few vs the good of the many. Our society is literally up for grabs now because doing what is right has been compromised by too many doing what is wrong even though they know it's not right!!! Even more scary, we have generations of people now who don't even know the difference anymore~ that's even scarier!

Perhaps the people of Detroit feel this way due to the shoddy actions of their elected representatives; Kilpatrick and Conyers to name only two...but there are MANY.

The writer hopes that the President doesn't let a depression happen ? He's showing his lack of understanding of the U.S. constitution from where the WE THE PEOPLE phrase comes. Nowhere in the constitution do WE THE PEOPLE give any President, Pres. Obama or another, the power over the economy. In addition to the lack of understanding of the constitution, this blog article is just some poor writing overall, CAPS or no caps.

This latest rant was another barely cohesive mess......It is depressing to see that educators are also preaching against people taking responsibility for their decisions.....The author is outraged by the behavior of bankers in dealing with foreclosures? Well, I save my outrage for the people who let greed and/or stupidity overwhelm their decision making process--the banks did not force them into signing on the dotted line. I'm outraged over the fact that one dime my money, and other taxpayer money would be used to bail out these irresponsible morons.........You just keep blaming the banks, I'll blame the ones who failed to make good on their obligations....

MooShoo and co.,
Mr. Eyster has obviously HEARD your repetitive rants about his style of writing, as he's already addressed it in this very blog. If, for some reason, you're still unable to contribute anything but your distaste for the caps key on this thread, could you please do the rest of the bloggers a favor and sign off? It seems a little ridiculous that you have nothing to say about the state of our economy, but can't seem to say enough about the creator of this threads choice of style of writing.
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Move on, please.

John, YOU ARE HEARING from the PEOPLE, unless you ARE HEARING IMPAIRED. We do give a rip whether or not you like to break from conventional rules, CAPS are hard to read and CONVEY YELLING. So organize your thoughts, and put them into coherent english.
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Politicians lie to us because the can. And the reason they can is compaign contributions buy a media campaign, which is really either a P.R. sound bite or a negative blitz on the opponent. This distortion of truth is paid for with lots and lots of special interest money. It is not their record, nor what they said during their terms, it it the intense purchased media blitz during the primaries and election cycle that win elections. Most incumbents don't face primaries because challengers don't have a war chest to fight the media campaign.
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Call for campaign finance reform and maybe your elected leaders will stop lying to you.

Barak Obama said saturday in his radio address, that we have to innovate.
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I doubt that will work, until we stop sending all the jobs out of this country for pure finacial reasons. innovation is nearly dead under this concept. we innovate, then box it up, lock stock and barrel. and send it overseas to be built cheaper. that is not sustainable.
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So when will we end this NAFTA lopsided trade deal. and bring OUR JOBS BACK HERE!
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WE cannot be a service economy, without the manufacturing, service "industries" is never going to provide the type and quality of jobs WE need to keep this economy afloat!
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WE are in a depression, and have been for some time. just look back to 1991. and look forward, bush asked people to spend, spend, spend. and that very spending is what is leading to this mess the past 2 years nearly. plastic debt, and paper debt on shopping, as well as to purchase homes. and leveled the economy because wall street was greedy with the loans re-sold as bonds. that brought the economy to its knees. they also got the politicians to remove the protections put in place from the previous great depression. eg. them being allow to jump into each other businesses. which was wrong I might add. bankers should have stayed doing banking, and insurance agents doing insurance, and wall street not getting into everything.
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till these are reformed, and protection put in place to prevent one group of businesses from making co-agreements with another field of business. it'll happen again. ie. repeal in 1999 of Glass-Steagall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steag...
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had that never been allowed, CDO would never been allowed to be sold. and AIG Inc. wouldn't have happened.
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and Today... WE wouldn't be discussing the differences between recession and depression.

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I stopped reading part way through, as well. Because CAPITALS in an online posting is usually incoherent ranting. And it's too difficult to read. I'd rather have no capitals at all, then to have it seemingly random throughout a posting.

Here are some numbers for ya:
Paul Ryan;$493,000
Tammy Baldwin;$295,000
Ron Kind;$335,000
These are the total dollar amounts that the health industry has given these "Representatives of the People". The health sector has given $200,000 THIS YEAR to our "Representatives of the People". The Milwaukee paper today printed this but didn't have our other "Representatives of the People" listed and what they had scrounged up for donations. The same article stated "Lawmakers Deny Influence". Jesus, I gotta go do a Rolaid!

Everything is relative. People's expectations are higher now than previous generations. The average size of a home has nearly doubled. One TV homes have become a TV in every room. One car families who buy cars every ten years haven given way to multiple car families who buy cars every few years. Having studied "The Great Depression" I find it a bit insulting to previous generations to make such comparisons. That said, the term used to describe our current economic situation is unimportant. I agree in total with Placebo. Certain parts of the country are facing worse conditions than others. It's tough to paint with a broad brush. I'm no economist, but I believe that until we bring back manufacturing jobs in this country we will continue to suffer. Technology and health care jobs are not for everyone.
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I understand the point of using all caps on this blog is to "break the rules" and "be who you are." However, it does make the blog hard to read and accomplishes very little in terms of emphasizing your points.

"To alcohol! The cause of... and solution to... all of life's problems." -- Homer Obama.

Mr. Eyster, while you have the RIGHT TO USE EXCESSIVE CAPITALIZATION in this blog, it does make it MORE DIFFICULT TO READ and VIOLATES THE RULES OF GRAMMAR WHICH ENGLISH TEACHERS ENFORCED UPON ME between the social studies classes you taught me in and DOESN'T SET A GOOD EXAMPLE for TODAY'S GENERATION OF READERS!
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It's a shame the Gazette can't use a different message board system, such as pppBB (see http://www.phpbb.com/community/ for an example), WHICH HAS FEATURES SUCH AS BOLDING OR CHANGING THE DEFAULT COLOR OF YOUR TEXT, and is easier to read than a GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT JUMBLE of CAPITALIZED WORDS. While you may refer to your style of writing "MODULATION", the convention established throughout the Internet, long before your appearance here is that you are "YELLING".
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A majority of people who don't know you are going to glance at your text and assume you are one of those slackers who skipped a lot of high school English classes. People who know your background (especially former students) are going to wonder if your writing style is a sign that perhaps your intellect has diminished with age. I'm going to glance at your future writings and if you are still using the same style of writing, just skip reading it - a luxury I didn't have back at Parker Senior High School.
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Sorry, but that's the way it is, Sunday, August 2nd, 2009. Good day.

WHY don't politicians tell the TRUTH?!
Is it possible the politicians don't work for the people? Do they work for special interest groups? It's very clear to me they don't work for "WE THE PEOPLE". Why should or would they tell the truth>>?? The American people have been asleep at the wheel for 30yrs. Oh might I add to no fault of their own. Suggestions by party lines to not educate our young people have lead to alot of this. Our BANKING SYSTEM is totaled~~!!! Our Markets full of crooks! Wonder how far they have gotten into our political system "THE CROOKS" that is?? Seems to me they don't have to tell the truth. We the American people would believe anything at this point. I spoke with our local Congressman not long ago about some of these same problems,his comment was,I understand your concern,however what can we do? WOW! Talk about lost!!!!

People's values have simply CHANGED. I have never heard from any of my parents or other older relatives, having stated they were anything other than POOR. You know back in the 50's etc. None of them could afford the things we have now. Everyone carries a cell phone, and their houses are filled with toys. I see these people very often, all over, and they have the ability to pay basic bills and then some.
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There ARE some people who cannot, but no more than in many years past. So MUCH hype is given to hot button terms and anything which people can throw into terms, all so that they may not have to own up to responsibilities. Americans have become entitlement orientated, and there are so many who exhibit this directly to me in my experiences.
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Sir, if we just stopped with excuses and OTHER NOT NEEDED contraversial issues, we would all do fine. I agree with your stance on the bureaurocratic whitewashing, but we are NOT in a recession. I find it interesting that not one person of COLOR attended that specific forum, however I'm not surprised. I agree, it is disappointing.
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We need to get away from bureauracracy and we need to get back to capitalism thinking. You can't have if you don't earn. I fear our system is going to fail in the future because of the crap thinking that exists and not enough people are/ will do what is needed to continue it. THEN there will be a RECESSION.
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Sir, you indicate that you are looking to the government (Which I want, believe, and support Government), to send you the answers, and place hope in the current so-called economic CRISIS. I think we need to look at what we have in our hands and stop holding them out. We ARE just fine, and we have at our disposals what we need to keep the economy strong. The only thing I BELIEVE is in our governments hands (AND THEY ARE FAILING), is the constant outsourcing of materials, jobs, and trade -related issues. "Made in China". This is why we need to get away from partisan politics.

According to an editorial I heard this morning on WCLO, Rose Stricker made it sound like most of the problems in JVL are brought about by the DEMOCRATS. Is that fair journalism? It sure didn't seem like it. What's your spin John?

Special communication for persons like "everyonesacritic," who are bothered by or misunderstand my use of ALL CAPS, please review my clarification in the FIRST BLOG POSTING on July 4. I was well advised by the Gazette's Newsflow editor, Kyle Geissler, to EXPLAIN. So I did... the DIRECT ACCESS URL for that particular blog posting is: http://www.gazettextra.com/weblogs/we-pe....

THANKS for reviewing! Sorry, but my style is ME and it is NOT going to change. I am NOT yelling! Here we go...

Mr. E.

I guess the recession vs. depression argument boils down to perception. Like any administration, the current one will take credit for any glimmers of positive, while blaming existing problems on old policies. I believe parts of the country, like the "oit" cities, Detroit and Beloit are in Depressions. You cannot fake unemployment numbers and overall dismal economic indicators. I think Janesville is well on its way towards a depression once the GM leftovers are done and the crumbs are all that remain. To lump the whole country into one depression filled basket is not fair either. I think we are at the breaking point, we either start slowly improving, or the nicer Wall Street numbers that don't relate to job numbers take another nosedive down in the 6000's. I don't think (hope) that will happen. This is going to be a long slow climb. For the anyone to predict victory by the end of 2009 is playing mind games with the People as well as themselves. We were a country that was recently propped for many years by a artificial housing boom. We are now depending on the government to use our money to give to certain people as incentives to spend money. I question the principle in doing so, and if printing money seems to be the answer, why not send every citizen $100,000 dollars in cash? I am scared about how much money is being sent into the economy. I think we are spending porcelain money that with the slightest road bump, could come crashing down on top of the house of cards that is currently supporting the economy.

JOHN, you GO man. We EAT up your words. Politicians feed us POOP.

Mr. Eyster doesn't have a clue what economic depression is. Also, Mr. Eyster, QUIT YELLING!

They can get away with not telling the truth because most of the people don't want to hear the truth. They only want to hear happy things. How often do you ever hear about the NAFTA Superhighway?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul349....

The more you read about that idea, the more upset you will get.

How 'bout the worlds largest embassy Bush built in Baghdad, Iraq? It's on 104 acres and includes an olympic sized swimming pool. American contractors were not used, but there were stories of slave labor hired by a kuwaiti company. Was the whole reason going into Iraq so we could build our own palace?

The second worlds largest embassy is the one Bush built in Beijing, China. It was completed and opened during the 2008 China olympics. Was that open house the real reason Bush was over there during the olympics? Wasn't one palace enough?

People, the controversial stuff is not going to be printed on the front page of the local paper. You have to dig for it, and yes, some is going to disturb you.